"The Pumpkin Eater" is a depressing film. Like "Darling" and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," it's one of those bleak, black & white 1960's dramas about self-absorbed "High Society" twits who are their own worst enemies.
Jo Armitage (Anne Bancroft) is an English housewife and mother. For her third marriage, Jo divorces her second husband and marries Jake Armitage (Peter Finch), a screenwriter. Jo and her four kids move into a house in London with Jake, and they have one or two more kids. (It's never made clear just how many children Jo has, but it's a lot.) Although Jake is a doting father to Jo's children, and seems to like kids, he makes Jo have an abortion when she becomes pregnant yet again.
Over time, Jo descends into depression, as her rotten, stinkin' husband has numerous extra-marital affairs. Jo suffers a nervous breakdown in Harrod's Department Store. She sees a psychiatrist for a time, then unreasonably dismisses him when he tells her he's taking a short vacation. She has an affair of her own with her ex-husband, and beats up Jake after he makes another girl pregnant. And they both keep smoking cigarettes -- and smoking, and smoking, and smoking.
These characters are making *themselves* miserable! It isn't simply that Jake is a rotten husband; Jo doesn't make it easy for him. She complains that he's ruining their marriage, but when Jake offers to take her along to Morocco, where one of his films is being shot, in hopes that they can save their marriage, Jo refuses to go with him. But she won't tell him *why* she refuses!
The movie is based on a novel by Patricia Mortimer, wife of John Mortimer (author of the "Rumpole" series). By all accounts, both Patricia and John had numerous affairs during their stormy marriage.
The screenplay is by Harold Pinter, himself a notorious womanizer. It features the usual "Pinter" touches – the hellish cocktail party, flashbacks, betrayals, cruelty, domination, an encounter with a caustic stranger (Jo meets a deranged woman at the beauty parlor who rips into her for having such a "perfect life"), and long slow passages of dialogue where people yammer on and on about nothing! Pinter was so good at this claptrap that they gave him the Nobel Prize for it.
James Mason plays a windbag movie director, whom Jake unwisely crosses by having an affair with his wife, and who then launches a vendetta against Jake. Maggie Smith makes an early appearance as a blabbering Cockney house guest who also has an affair with Jake. And Cedric Hardwicke (in his last role) plays Jo's father, who warns Jake and Jo that their marriage will be a disaster, but cheerfully pays for the wedding and gives them a house to live in anyway.
One element of the story that I found particularly unbelievable was Jake and Jo's children. They seem unnaturally happy, eternally pippy, always smiling and laughing. Jo's oldest daughter is a bubbly teen who cheerfully visits Jo in the hospital, and doesn't seem to realize her mother has just had an abortion. Even the two oldest sons, whom Jo ships off to boarding school, bear her no ill will, and smile when they are finally reunited, even though their mother has selfishly cast them aside.
Do these kids have *any idea* that their parents are at each other throats? Don't they hear the screaming and fighting that is coming from the bedroom down the hall? The kids seem blissfully unaware of the marital infidelities and emotional cruelty their parents inflict on each other! Real kids would be traumatized and upset by what is going on in this house (not to mention asthmatic, because of all the smoking their parents do)!
Yes, Anne Bancroft gives a good performance. But the movie is so dismal, it's no wonder Julie Andrews got the Oscar for "Mary Poppins." If you were an Academy voter, which would you choose? "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" or *this* depressing downer?
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